Hollywood’s “Ugly Beauty” Trend Is Growing—Here’s What Psychologists Have To Say About It

Doja Cat attended Paris Fashion Week painted in red and covered in thousands of Swarovski crystals, a strange costume you’d expect from The Hunger Games and not in real life. She’s not the only one who’s been “uglifying” the red carpet, though – Julia Fox remains browless, often in bold makeup and interesting outfit choices. Lizzo has gone to a Lakers game with her bare butt exposed to the crowd, and Lil Nas X wore silver body paint, platform boots, and a thong at the 2023 Met Gala. There’s now a name for this growing phenomenon, at least when it pertains to weird makeup choices, and the internet has dubbed it “ugly beauty.” 

Rather than makeup accentuating your features, the ugly beauty trend does the opposite: Cosmetics are used intentionally to make you look weird or abnormal. Why though? According to psychologist Carly Dober, this new movement shows that young women are "poking fun" at current beauty standards. “It tells me that women who are playing around with makeup and exploring different looks are critically analyzing their relationship to makeup and self-expression and how their relationship to makeup can best serve them,” Dr. Dober said. 

She notes that young women usually experiment with makeup and create extravagant looks but that the "media, age and public expectations and beauty standards" compels them to abandon this play and instead opt for choices that aren’t conventionally attractive. Women who have embraced the essence of ugly beauty have influenced others to do the same. “It’s trending for a reason, and maybe some people regret adhering to traditional beauty standards and eschewing fun makeup trends,” Dr. Dober explained.

Dr. Dober suggests that women not wanting to use cosmetics for pretty purposes could have something to do with the "male gaze," which is typically an exaggerated and hypersexualized image of women. In a sense, ugly beauty is an act of rebellion against men’s expectations of what is attractive. It’s to “free” themselves from the shackles of wanting to be perceived as pretty. She added, “I think that Gen Z has a lot of capacity and social license to critically evaluate what the male gaze has and has not done for them, and to evaluate what it’s provided and taken away from previous generations of women, and they are asking themselves and each other, ‘Is it actually worth it?’”

Is Ugly Beauty More Beneficial or Detrimental to Women?

The “ugly beauty” trend may be empowering to some women, but herein lies the problem – accepting that conventional beauty standards are largely societal constructs suggests that beauty is subjective, which isn’t necessarily true – even babies seem to be born with an eye for beauty. "Attractiveness is not simply in the eye of the beholder, it is in the brain of the newborn infant right from the moment of birth and possibly prior to birth,” says developmental psychologist Alan Slater.

To abandon beauty altogether may be more harmful to women in the long run because attractiveness appears synonymous with health. A study from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health suggests there's a strong correlation between an individual's physical attractiveness and health. Participants who scored above average in attractiveness were found to have significantly better health than their average-looking counterparts. This connection is also consistent across different genders and racial groups.  Beauty has also been tied to values like goodness, truth, and justice, and those who have a deep appreciation for beauty and try to cultivate it in different aspects of their lives cultivate mindfulness and awareness.

Ugly beauty has evidently grown in the last decade, but I can’t say it’s really “challenging” much of anything. As we’ve seen with the premiere of the Barbie movie and the dressed-up girls who went to watch it in their pretty outfits and makeup, enhancing your appearance is here to stay and, if anything, embraced – and that's beautiful.

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